


The Madness of Ray Doyle

by jat_sapphire



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Ableist Language, Episode: s03e05 The Madness of Mickey Hamilton, Episode: s03e07 Runner, Episode: s04e14 Kickback, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 06:12:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14635739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jat_sapphire/pseuds/jat_sapphire
Summary: Several points of view on Ray and his volatile nature, primarily Bodie's and Kate Ross's.





	The Madness of Ray Doyle

“Why are we here, mate?” Bodie asked, as softly as if the child in the oxygen tent could hear him. He hated places like this, distempered walls with crucifixes everywhere, cheap uncomfortable furniture and nuns gliding silently in and out. This one was worse than most, with a dying little girl in front of them.

Ray was staring down at Kathy Hamilton as she lay there, unresponsive. Her round face was flushed. “He believed I’d visit. If he’d lived a few more seconds, I would have promised.”

Bodie looked away, pressing his lips together, but couldn’t help but try again. “She never knew that. She doesn’t know we’re here now.”

“He needed somebody to come, Bodie! Leave off.” Ray’s hand went out toward the child, but drew back before touching the plastic tent. “All I could do.”

“You did everything you could for Mickey Hamilton.” Bodie had seen Ray treat the mentally ill gunman kindly, gently—really, _tenderly_ was the only word. _Who’s the big softie now?_ Bodie thought, wished he could say.

“Including letting him get shot.”

With an exasperated noise, Bodie said, “Shannon shot him, and Shannon’s a trigger-happy nutter! Damn it, Ray!” Bodie slapped the windowsill because any more satisfying blow would break something or get them yelled at by Reverend Mother.

Ray met his eyes and held them. “Trigger. Happy. Nutter,” he said evenly. “Well, we should know.”

Bodie gave up. “I’ll wait at the car.” He strode past the novice who’d been left there to show them out.

Once at the Capri, Bodie leaned against the driver door and resigned himself. It was a fool’s game to try to comfort Doyle when he had one of his fits of guilt. Bodie should have known better than to even go along.

The gravel was unevenly graded. Bodie scuffed one foot in the rut nearest the car wheel. It was at times like this that he missed smoking.

Eventually, Ray came out the main door and stood uncertainly at the bottom of the stairs, where the entrance arch rose solidly on each side. He leaned on the left column, his head down, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Bodie stood away from the car, hoping his movement would catch Ray’s attention. But Ray turned in a rush and kicked the brick column, then hit it with one fist. He stood, still hunched, looking into the middle distance. After a while he pulled his shoulders straighter and turned, caught sight of Bodie and the Capri, and came over, not with his usual graceful lope but hesitantly. Bodie decided not to mention anything about the visit unless Ray brought it up.

As Bodie drove, Ray sat in silence. But when they were getting off the motorway, he suddenly asked, “What d’ya got on this Saturday, then? The lovely Harriet off work?”

“Marian.”

“The lovely Marian, then.”

Bodie considered spinning the tale of lovely Marion who was eager as a mink in bed, but he suddenly didn’t feel like it. He just shrugged. “Giving her a chance to rest before the next big event, aren’t I?”

“Sure she’s the one who needs the rest?”

“Sod off, Doyle.”

It seemed a perfectly normal afternoon, then, for a while, but against his better judgement, Bodie tried once more as they drove the last stretch to Ray’s flat.

“Why did we go to Saint Lucinda’s?”

Ray didn’t look over, staring out the passenger window, the broken cheek toward Bodie. “A kid should get visited in hospital.”

Opening his mouth to say again that this particular kid … Bodie realised that they were no longer talking about Kathy Hamilton. He let the silence rest between them. Ray never talked directly about what had happened to his cheek. Having even this much of a confidence warmed Bodie.

But Ray, in a way, gave him more. In front of his flat block, when he stood up out of the car, he immediately ducked his head back in. “Interested in attending a funeral?”

With a grin, Bodie answered, “Sounds a right knees-up.”

“Too right.” But Ray still waited.

Bodie gave in. “Let me know when it is, then. If we’re not on.”

“Yeah, yeah.” And then Ray really did go.

# # #

Kathy died December 20th, a terrible time to try to arrange anything, her aunt Kay thought. Not that she’d done it on purpose, of course, but it seemed just like a child of Mick’s to be as inconvenient as humanly possible.

The church was Maureen’s old one, neglected and grim, covered in soot, but nearby the flat block. Father Greenacre did the service. They all stood there in the splintery pews and breathed musty air. Even the lily wreath Vic had got in, because he knew what was needed, her Vic, didn’t scent the air enough to drive off that awful damp. A good thing their Mum couldn’t see all this. She’d never even laid eyes on Kathy, and she was long gone by the time Maureen took herself off. So selfish of her. And then Mick … she started to cry, and a lucky thing nobody looking would know that she was really crying for that whole ruined life of her brother’s.

Altogether, even counting Father Greenacre, there were only seven people in attendance: Kay herself and Vic, the Reverend Mother from St. Lucinda’s, that terrible snooty sister of Maureen’s who had never given any of them the time of day, and that curly-haired man who’d asked her all the questions about Mick and told her how terribly he’d behaved. And his friend. The one with all the curls wasn’t really dressed properly, but he did have a tie on, and not everyone could have a nice suit like her Vic. The other was a bit too sleek, but had blacks on, really respectful.

They came over afterwards and said all those awkward funeral things. Kay thanked them, especially for the way the first man had brought back the photo of Mick and Maureen and Kathy, so they could have it on the little coffin and remember happier days. The two men stood side by side, and the darker man seemed to be taking care of the other one some way, which made her want to cry again for poor Mick. He’d always been lonely, never really had a chum he could turn to, and though she and Vic had tried after Maureen’s death, it really wasn’t the same.

“It’s so nice of you to come with your friend,” she blurted out to the darker one, who looked surprised and embarrassed, though his curly-headed friend smiled at him with affection. Then they left.

“A little on the pouf side, I’d ’a thought,” Vic said as they went out the door.

“Oh, no, they’re policemen or something,” Kay said.

Oddly, they were still about later, though she and Vic had been delayed quite some time. Maybe they’d been in the churchyard. There were a few old stones, interesting if you liked that kind of thing. Kay never had. She took Vic’s arm and adjusted her hat to try and keep off the light snow that had started to fall. They went out to the van that said “Costa Fresh Veg_bles.” The two young men went over to the golden car they’d come in.

They stopped at the driver’s door and were talking about something. Then the curly-haired one took a checked scarf out of his pocket and hooked it over his friend’s head, tying it for him and giving it a pat afterwards. They were both laughing.

Even in the good days at the beginning, Mick adoring Maureen so and she just pregnant, making him so proud he was bursting with it, even then they never did anything like that. Kay shook her head. Poor Mick.

# # #

So many parts of Kate Ross’s job had turned out to be challenging. Not just the fact that these patients, especially the A Squad agents, were resistant to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy almost to the point of violence. Not just that Kate knew that the traumas and defence mechanisms they carried were likely at almost any time to burst into precipitate action that might put uncounted civilians in harm’s way. And, on that much smaller but still trying scale, that so many of them were adrenaline-junkie males with so many sexist assumptions and inclinations toward harassment that she sometimes felt she was wading through treacle just talking to them.

And then there were assessments like this one, with Ray Doyle, in which the indications she was following in the word-association tests and the behavioural observations (not to say gossip) were so faint that she couldn’t be sure there was anything there and didn’t dare to assume there was not.

He was standing, appearing to look out the window though she did not believe he saw anything interesting in the car park.

“I see here,” she said, putting her finger on the test item, “that when asked for an association with “child,” you said “hospital.”

“Went to see one, didn’t I. A little girl in hospital, nursing home to be exact. Just a few days ago, suppose it was still in my head.” Now he made eye-contact, to push her away rather than to connect. “Don’t see many kids in my day to day, do I?”

“Why did you visit this one?”

“Bodie asked as well,” and saying his partner’s name appeared to relax him. He smiled a little. “I don’t know why, to be honest. I felt sorry for her, I know, and for her family. Couldn’t do anything.”

Kate reminded him of the connection she had realised: “You were much the same age when you had your cheek surgery.” It was in his personnel file, of course, and the injury was the precipitating event for his going into care.

His expression was entirely blank. “Well, Doctor Freud-ess. You ’ave me dead to rights. We’re exactly the same, since she’s a girl, brain damaged, and buried.”

Without responding to the jibe or to the exaggerated accent, Kate made a note on the file, then continued to review it. Eventually, Doyle made an impatient movement, but he said nothing and in the end turned back to the window.

“Your training assessment notes indicate that when you spar with a female agent, you don’t perform as well.”

“Mean I pull my punches? Course I do. Want ‘em in good working order for later,” and his leer was almost comic.

“Indeed?” Kate said coldly.

“Indeed,” with a steely grin.

This interview was going nowhere, like so many others. All Kate could do was add another note.

# # #

Cindy was nearly blind with fatigue, or she might’ve called that nice Bodie. A looker, fine in bed, and he stayed the night for a little morning action. But after the 12-hour day she’d had with the others at the bakery to get all that wedding order done, she could hardly have found her latch key—wait, now she was poking her fingers through the mail slot for it, but she really couldn’t find the twine it hung on. If it had broken, then what? All the wanted was to drop into bed, and she couldn’t let herself in!

Frustrated, she grabbed and twisted the knob—and it opened. She knew she’d locked it. Beyond was a darkness that should be familiar, but was suddenly strange and cold, the way the cellar had always been when her Mam sent her down for potatoes or turnips. She had always felt something was going to snatch at her, even when she was going back up. Or something would speak to her in the creaky voice Granda always used when he told ghost stories. She was shaking, and she tried to calm herself, make fun of her silly fears. All she had to do was close the door and flip the light switch. Nothing, really.

She closed the door.

A low voice, a bit scratchy, said, “Hello, sweetheart.”

She would have screamed, but she didn’t have enough air.

A click on the other side of the room, and the table lamp came on. The shade was angled, so the person sitting next to it was still hardly visible: a round, uneven head, still body, leather jacket sleeves in the light, and her latchkey swinging from its twine, the end in a man’s hand.

“You are a pretty one.” The approval in the voice didn’t make her any less afraid. “Sit down, then. I want to talk to you.”

“I … you … do I know you?”

“We’ve met. Not formally introduced.”

Shakily, she put her hand out to the easy chair nearest the door, grasped the back, and groped around to sit on the edge of the seat. At this angle, she could see his face better but couldn’t recognize him. She still had no idea why he was there.

He lifted his hand a little, so the key swung again, glinting in the lamplight.

“I told you to take better care of this,” he said. “You were almost asleep, so perhaps you don’t remember. I’m Bodie’s partner. Doyle.” His other hand moved, and what it held also lit up, shining.

It was a knife, short-bladed like one of those folding ones, but plenty if he wanted to cut her up.

“Come get your key,” his voice was soft and terrifying.

“P-put it down.”

“No, sunshine. Come get it.”

She didn’t dare. He sat like a stone. Gradually, the key came to rest, hanging motionless, but he still held it.

“I could hurt you, you know. And if you see Bodie again, with your shite security, I will.” Faster than she would have thought possible, he lunged forward until his face was much too near her own. His cheek was strangely lumpy, his eyes were sharp and cold, and his mouth was slightly open, showing just the tips of his teeth. She closed her eyes, thinking him monstrous, panting with fear. “Here’s your key,” he almost whispered.

She felt the tiny blow as it struck her knee, fell into her skirt. She couldn’t move. Then she heard the door close.

It was a long while before she opened her eyes and found herself alone.

# # #

Today Doyle was driving and seemed tense with it. Bodie kept glancing over, wondering about the way Doyle’s hands clenched on the wheel, the little tuneless whistle he’d started and stopped three times already since they’d gotten in the car. Searching for something to say, he fell back on, “Funny thing about Cindy.”

“Cindy?”

“You know, the girl I was with when you had to come get me the other day. She couldn’t get enough then.”

“The one with her key hanging through the mail slot?” Doyle’s voice had a sharp note—still ratty about something.

“That how she kept it? Oh, yeah, I suppose it is.” Bodie had not been thinking about how they’d opened the flat door, but how they’d fallen into her bed, how she’d had one orgasm after another, slept like the dead for a couple of hours, and then started over. She could eat a man alive, she could. “Thing is, I thought we’d do it all again, or maybe even have dinner first, but she won’t answer her phone.”

Doyle clicked his tongue: _tch-tch_.

A non-starter, this conversation. “Well, her loss.” Without really looking, Bodie was aware of an intense gaze across the car. Quite a few of those had come his way since the bomb they’d defused in the car park, as if Doyle needed to check that Bodie was still there. He pressed his lips together. Where else would he be? He wasn’t the one who’d been ready to give up, who’d said as the clock ticked, 6:00 already and both their hands on the geli, “Let’s leave it.”

Let’s _leave_ it! What the hell?

“Why’d you want to leave that bomb?” he asked, somehow certain Doyle would follow his train of thought.

Doyle shrugged. “It didn’t go off, did it?”

“We pulled the wires, what else was it going to do?” Bodie had begun to be annoyed. “Dance a jig? Bloom into a rose?”

“Timer might just have been a little off.”

“All the more reason to pull the wires! Doyle, I need to know you’re not going to …” Run off the rails? Off a cliff?

“I thought it might just be delayed,” Doyle said again, “and you might’ve been able to outrun it. I was the one Duffy was after, wasn’t I? Not you.”

“The bomb knew that, of course.” Bodie rolled his eyes. “You prat. Just don’t do it, Doyle. Never again.”

Doyle smiled for the first time that day. “Yes, sir. No excuse, sir.”

“Now, after me, ‘May I have another, sir?’”

“Not on your life.”

# # #

“Mister Doyle,” Kate began, “Mister Cowley directed me to interview you in regard to a recent complaint from a member of the public.”

Doyle looked sceptical. “Take some git’s parking spot? Didn’t bow and scrape to a minor minister?”

Kate glared back. “Cynthia Burgess says you broke into her flat and threatened her life.”

“Oh, _come_ on!” He tilted his head, rolled his eyes. “That little bint, she practically had a signboard out. Break in? A four year old could get into that flat. I tell you, the door practically blew open in the wind. Broke in, Christ. And anyway, how’d she know to call CI5? I’ll kill Bodie.”

“Bodie?”

“Well, how else’d she get the phone number here?”

Kate looked down her nose, knew she was doing it, and said anyway, “She did not call CI5: she called her MP. She told him that someone named Doyle, working in the civil service—” Doyle laughed; it was short and contemptuous “—was waiting for her when she got home from work.”

He had no remorse. “I did go in. I told her … I told her to keep her fucking latchkey better.” He shot a glance at Kate. “I wasn’t kind about it.”

“You terrorized her in her own home.”

He shrugged. After a pause, he said, “Bet she locks up now.”

Kate made a note and ignored the glare he sent her way. At least he wasn’t threatening her. Yet. “Bodie had been seeing this woman. Was that relationship connected to your outrageous behaviour in any way?”

“Con-nec-ted,” he repeated, mockingly. “Course. He was pulling her, she was leaving her goddamn door practically unlocked. I was being stalked by a nutter whose brother I had to shoot. No telling whether he’d go after Bodie, or maybe some other murderous idjit meant to do the same. Doctor Ross—” and the sound of her title also showed nothing but contempt— “Doctor, this mob has security procedures. Not loose latchkeys.”

“I know the security procedures.”

“Then what the hell are we talking about? I’m going. The Cow wants to know more, he can ask me.” Almost on the last word, the door closed behind him.

Kate made some more notes, then let Betty know she was coming to report to Mr Cowley.

 

# # #

Jack Craine had lived well all his adult life by adhering to two simple tenets: sometimes a man just needed a good shag, and other times, a man needed a good knock-down, drag-out fight. While his training grounds couldn’t outright offer the first, he knew when to leave a shaking bush alone, and he prided himself on identifying and making room for the second. He could see that 4-5 and 3-7 were just at a point to need it.

As Jack knew as well as anyone who paid attention to scuttlebutt, Bodie and Doyle had been undergoing assignments and surviving personal upheavals that could have torn apart any two-man team: Bodie playing silly buggers at this very training ground before he ran so far off the cricket pitch that it took Cowley’s pistol at his head to rein him in; Doyle throwing the rule book in the dustbin in order to run after Bodie and his papoose bomb; Bodie having to vet Doyle’s girl and Doyle interrogating her father—yeah, weeks of explosions, and the dust not settled.

So now they stood oriented away from each other. Doyle’s right shoulder was held too high and Bodie’s left hand was fisted in his jacket pocket. They unpredictably missed helping each other up walls, or took too long to do reps when the other one was spotting. Their banter was edged, more than usual—Doyle could always be cutting, but when Bodie’s remarks stopped being friendly cheek, the whole bloody Squad was in trouble.

Jack had a routine to clear the air. It had worked pretty well with other partnerships. First, he chose another pair, in this case Lucas and McCabe, who worked together decently well, and the two teams sparred. As 3-7 and 4-5 at their best were in Jack’s opinion twice as good as the next team, current performance levels left them pretty well matched. Good clean fun was had by all: Lucas’s ankle wasn’t badly twisted, while Bodie’s head was too hard anyway for the lump to be much of a problem. Then it was Bodie and McCabe against Doyle and Lucas, which worked out about the same in terms of weight. Everyone was awkward, of course. That was part of the point.

The following day was a scenario in which the winning team were rewarded by going home earlier in the afternoon than the others. Bodie and McCabe needed to interpret surveillance tapes and set up a sniping position that the others could not locate or neutralise. Doyle and Lucas needed to create misleading information for the surveillance to pick up, then find and eliminate the bugs the others were using and evade the sniping. Sharing information about their usual partners, using what they knew, was the winning strategy, but often it felt like betrayal.

At the conclusion of the exercise, Doyle punched Bodie right on the chin.

This was excellent, Jack thought.

The next day’s individual sparring was as close to straightforward fist-fighting as could possibly be desired. Bodie got in a good punch on Doyle’s undamaged cheek; Doyle landed several blows on Bodie’s ribs. Bodie bloodied Doyle’s nose and Doyle hit Bodie in the mouth. They grappled and kicked, and Bodie wore a grin so fierce it looked as though he were preparing to take a bite right out of Doyle’s face. What was interesting to Jack was how silently they fought. He would have expected Doyle to taunt, yell, badger—especially as the somewhat smaller of the two, stopping Bodie from thinking would usually be a good move. And Bodie, Jack realised, wasn’t using the full extent of his weight advantage. Still, it wasn’t as if the two of them were slacking or playing. They were really bruising, really bleeding, and really getting all the anger out of those muscles and into the fight. Worth that black eye—those black eyes.

True, they looked so battered the next morning that Cowley asked for a report. Also, they could barely be civil to poor McCabe and Lucas. But they burned up the steeplechase, and afterwards, Doyle threw Bodie a clean towel for the shower. On their way out of the dressing room, Bodie threw an arm over Doyle’s shoulders and they went down to the pub.

Jack congratulated himself on a job well done.

# # #

Kate concluded the quarterly assessment interview as usual: “Do you have any concerns or questions? Is there anything I can help you with?”

Unexpectedly, Ray Doyle said, “Yeah, matter of fact. I mean, I have a couple of questions, trying to, to improve our, my, work. But I don’t know whether you can help or not. Be honest, most of this—” he waved a dismissive hand— “seems like right mumbo-jumbo, or maybe techno-jargon. But you have training. I’ve only got what a copper with an inquiring mind can get for himself.”

“No,” and Kate could hear the primness in her own voice, “it’s not at all the same.”

“And you have to report everything, record it too. That makes me uneasy. What if it’s nothing? Or what if it’s something but not something Cowley needs to know?”

“What harm could my records do you?”

“Don’t know, you see. And I don’t know whether I can trust that training of yours either.” Doyle ran one hand through his mop of curls, disarranging them further. “The assumptions are all wrong, that’s the trouble.”

“Excuse me?” Kate would have been offended if she weren’t interested in this new persona of Doyle’s, so different from Bodie’s loyal sidekick or the seductive chatter-up—or the psychotic housebreaker.

“Look,” Doyle went on, “It’s, it’s like Anson. To misquote, those cigars are not just cigars. Better off without, right? Pleasanter for everyone and healthier for him. But have you seen him when he doesn’t have them? Nervy and mean as a snake, distracted all the time, worthless on an op. He needs them to keep his mind on the job. These things, habits, tempers, whatever, we _need_ them. If we were all healthy and normal like you think we should be, we couldn’t do the job. This _bloody_ job,” and abruptly (these mood shifts of his were always abrupt) he was angry, springing up from the chair and pacing a few steps back and forth.

“You’re worried about how I assess Anson,” Kate said.

“Course not. You know that. I’m just saying you can’t cure us of being agents.” He glared at her, but she just regarded him calmly, and eventually he broke. “Bodie. And me.”

It was hard-won, this admission, so she allowed it to echo in the silence between them before asking, “And what do you identify as the ‘abnormalities’ that Bodie—and you—need in order to function in CI5’s A Squad?”

Unsurprisingly, he didn’t answer, just gave her that hard-eyed stare for a while. At last, he spoke, predictably with an attack: “You’re very superior when you brush us off, when we chat you up. Feel good, does that? Too busy congratulating yourself to know why Bodie does it?”

“A typical masculine—”

At that his hands flew up, and he turned away. “Useless, innit?” he growled, as though to himself. Then he turned back to spit out, “He’s afraid. _Afraid_. So am I. If you can’t see our fear, all of our fears, how can you help us at all?”

Of course she knew that they experienced fear. Wasn’t that what she had just begun to say? She swallowed that frustration, took a deep breath, and asked neutrally, “What help would you prefer that I give?”

He made some sort of hand gesture. She wasn’t sure what it meant. He sat back down in the chair and carded through his hair again. “When Bodie was after King Billy,” guilt and pain were plain in his voice, “I didn’t—I pulled away. Let him be. I let him see I was disappointed, exasperated, but that was all. It wasn’t right. I had—my reasons, but they don’t matter now. It was almost a disaster.” His voice cracked a little. “The worst disaster.”

“So the next time he expresses a death wish—”

He shouted, “It wasn’t a _death wish_! I don’t know why I bother! With you!” He whirled away, one hand pinching his mouth together as if to keep words in, and then in a flash he made a fist and crashed it onto a corner of her desk. Every object on it jumped.

“ _Mister_ Doyle!”

Kate had never seen a human being bare his teeth in rage. She saw it now. “Hopeless, you are! And I—and Bodie—” He took a quick breath as if he were going to sob, but stood motionless instead with head bent, his whole frame exuding energy and passion. She watched in silence as his muscles gradually relaxed, until he was ready to meet her eyes again. “I’ll have to work it out myself.”

The answer to that was obvious. “Certainly you will, if you cannot bring yourself to share your problem fully with me.”

“Yeah.” Obviously, he was not willing. “Well, d’you need anything more for our good friend Herbie? Or are we done for the quarter?”

“I’m—I have what I need for your report, I believe.”

“ _Fine_ ,” and he slammed his way out.

# # #

Bodie didn’t like to talk about failed ops, or traitorous friends, or for Crissake _feelings_. But he couldn’t deny that the Keller business had made him, well, uncertain, as if the ground he thought was steady was actually moving, like a fun-fair floor. Keller might have nagged him at every opportunity about that bullet, but he really had taken it and saved Bodie. What better proof of loyalty had he ever known?

Then.

Because here was Doyle, now, playing (cheating at) Mastermind and taking him to pubs, eating fried takeaway without complaint (or not much complaint), losing at darts and scoring more hits in handgun practice—just letting Bodie know that Keller wasn’t what a mate looked like. It gave him a curious sensation, like a balloon inflating inside him.

Unfortunately, he was also having one of those times when he kept noticing Doyle, wanting to get in close and tousle his hair, generally play silly buggers with him because too much space between them felt cold. Not something he’d ever noticed with Keller, or anyone else he worked with.

Ray didn’t mind, either. He seemed to know exactly what Bodie was about—knew better than Bodie, and was more willing to bring it out into the light, speak the words. In Bodie's flat after one night at the pub like so many others, he put his hand on Ray’s shoulder and felt Ray's settle above his belt, flat on the polo, warm and firm. “I’m here, Bodie, right here.” He didn’t move away, let Bodie look his fill.

The tip of Ray’s tongue slipped out, drew in his lower lip, let it go. He swallowed. Bodie couldn’t drag his eyes away, couldn’t help but touch. Only one finger (that wasn’t too much, was it?) sliding down Ray’s neck to where the pulse beat, strong and steady. Its rhythm increased, honest blood straight from the heart. Bodie dragged his finger in an arc over the collarbone to the notch where Ray’s chest hair began, then farther down to the silver chain, hooking into it and tugging it a little. All this time, Ray had stood motionless. Now he swallowed again and Bodie met his eyes.

He didn’t think he’d wondered how those eyes would look, closer than he’d ever seen them. Lines of laughter and strain lay all unstrung, where Bodie had never thought to smooth them. The way those eyelashes nearly touched Ray’s eyebrows was a sight never recalled, never imagined. Bodie had never wanted to feel Ray’s quick breath on his own mouth while he sorted the tangled threads of green and grey and blue in Ray’s irises.

When Ray’s pupils dilated, Bodie stopped lying and let his lips come home.

They might have eased into this kiss, but once it was definitely happening, Ray put his arm all the way around Bodie and pulled them impossibly close, reached for Bodie’s hair, flared bright and hot. His lips and tongue pushed in, drew back, wooed and promised, cherished and demanded. When their lips parted, it was only to smile.

Ray asked, “What do you want?”

There wasn't enough air. Bodie needed a moment before he could joke, “So I'm in the driver's seat?”

“Tonight. Fast as you want to go.”

Bodie thought he'd never catch his breath again. “This is not like you, Raymond.”

This time the answer was a quick kiss and Ray's palm on Bodie's face. “Is, though.” Another light touch of lips, then words again: “For this.” Short kisses became longer ones, opening Bodie's mouth again, like revving an engine, deeper and wetter, and now both Ray's hands were framing the kiss, his broad thumbs stroking and pressing in so Bodie knew they felt his tongue moving around Ray's. Between them was vibration, a moan closed into their mouths, and Bodie thought he himself was making the sound but realised he also felt it on his palm on Ray's back and in his other hand on the curve between ribs and hip, through Ray's shirt.

After this kiss, they leaned their foreheads together. Ray's eyes were closed, his lashes on his cheeks, the skin of his eyelids a colour Bodie had never seen before except in a dawn thunderstorm long ago. Ray almost whispered, “What do you want?”

Bodie answered, “To see you.”

Ray tilted his head back, opened and narrowed his eyes, and bent his eyebrows sceptically.

“All of you. Naked,” Bodie explained.

“Let's take this into the bedroom, then. Don't like rug burn.”

“Nobody does,” Bodie agreed. 

Separating for even these few steps disoriented Bodie, and he stopped. This just could not be real. Could it? But Ray looked back, his face said _follow_ , and as always, Bodie did: followed into the room Ray had never stepped foot in before, followed to the bed itself where Ray stretched out muscled and hairy arms and legs. The span of his chest, that silver chain spilled across, the rise and fall of his ribs, the hollow of his stomach where his treasure trail widened and narrowed, stopped Bodie like a wall. This man held Bodie's life in his hand, and was his to protect. And here he was.

Ray dressed left, and when he said “Join me, sunshine,” Bodie answered, “Shove over, then,” because he wanted his own face right there next to the blunt mass of Ray's cock, wanted to take as much of the wide sac in his hand as would fit, from under that taut thigh while Ray writhed and chuckled low and lengthened and got redder. Bodie pulled with his right hand, massaged with his left, licked up the balls' seam and up the shaft to take the head into his mouth as it emerged wet and round from the foreskin.

Breathing in sweat and a trace of soap and Ray's sharp musk, Bodie tasted salt-bitter sweat and sweet-salt pre-cum. He unclasped his left hand and reached toward Ray's face. Ray groaned, then snickered when Bodie wiggled his first two fingers, but took them in his mouth all the same and made them wet, sucked and licked them while Bodie played as best he could with that agile tongue. Then he took the fingers back and ran them up and down Ray's cock, tapped and drew circles that Bodie blew over, making Ray shiver, then took in his cock again, more of it, on his tongue and the roof of his mouth. “Mm hmm,” said Bodie, and when he caught Ray's clouded gaze, sucked harder and waggled his eyebrows. For that, he got another shiver, Ray swelling even more in his mouth, and another laugh which seemed to bring on Ray's orgasm.

Bodie had nothing against swallowing, but he wanted even more to see, so he leaned back and watched each pulse of semen like cream, burst into the air and down on his face, Ray's thigh, Ray's stomach, Bodie's shoulder. Then he moved to straddle Ray's leg, rub himself on Ray's thatch of pubic and thigh hair, wet and hot and rough and soft, back and forth, both moving while bolts of sensation filled his cock. He could almost smell ozone, waiting for the lightning, but Ray didn't wait, his hands on Bodie's hips and slipping under to stroke and tease, fingertips to a strong grip and there was a callus, Ray's gun hand, _Ray's gun hand_. There! And again, and again, electricity bursting through his body. He'd pushed himself up, he realised, weight on his arms and his pelvis, and turned to his side, bringing Ray along while echoes shot through him and he kissed up Ray's chest until he reached that mobile, laughing mouth.

In time, Bodie rolled onto his back and lay sated, relaxed, fitting into the world again, for now.

Weight shifted beside him, over him, but Ray didn’t kiss or speak. Bodie lifted his eyelids to find he was being examined. He’d seen that expression countless times over a file or during interrogation, but he’d rarely had those set lips and veiled eyes turned on him. Just after sex, the effect was unsettling.

“What?” he asked irritably.

Ray’s mouth relaxed slowly into a smile, and his eyes grew warm again. “Good, then?”

 _Bloody irresistible_. “Oh, passable.” Bodie put one hand at the back of Ray’s neck and pulled a little.

Ray kissed him, but briefly. “Maniac. I had a plan, and lube and all, and you wrecked it.”

“That so? Too bad. Still, there's always next time.” His eyes were nearly closed, but he watched under his lashes for Ray's response.

He got another of Ray's toothy smiles. “Yeah.”

So he had to ruffle that soft, tangled hair, and was relieved enough to ask, “Not that I'm not appreciative and all, but what brought all this on?”

“Sheer bloody perversity,” Ray said as if it were a virtue. “Ross keeps talking like being a team should get us in a padded room in and of itself.”

“Well, we know Cowley isn't interested in seeing us cured.”

“No, though this—” Ray waved a hand over the messed bedclothes, their well-shagged selves— “is in the books as 'sexual orientation disturbance.'I looked it up.”

Bodie shrugged as well as he could flat on his back. “Don't care, do you? Give Ross something new to chew on. She needs it. You know she still asks _me_ about Kathy Hamilton? I can't tell whether she's getting evidence on you or thinks I've some kind of complex.” He crossed his eyes and raised and lowered his eyebrows again. “A _perversion_.”

Ray suddenly looked appalled. “I told her you'd asked me why we went. I think I let you in for it.”

“Let her amuse herself.” Bodie leaned up on his elbow so he could reach Ray's face. Tentatively, he rested a fingertip on the hollow of the broken cheek, then drew a line to the corner of his mouth. “I think I might know.” Ray said nothing, and his expression was blank, but not angry. “Anyway,” Bodie dropped to his back again, not looking at Ray, “I consider it comes under the Official Secrets Act. Need to Know, and she? Does not.”

“Someday,” Ray said very softly, and that made Bodie sit up and look at him properly. This was too important to be unclear about.

“It doesn't matter, Ray. Not a bit.” He laid his hand on Ray's forearm, where the muscles were so hard, and shook it a little. “It's the man you are now.”

Slowly, Ray's smile returned. “The partners we are now. Made it easy. Not like … you know, having to ask if this is OK or that feels good.”

“Well, not really new, is it? You must know, I've been lusting after you and trying not to stare since about day three. Teatime, if I recall.” Bodie tugged Ray's earlobe. “And after Macklin 'n all, I'd better know where you'll move, pay attention to your signals. And you mine.”

Ray positively burst into laughter this time, sitting up and shaking his head. “Oh, let's tell him,” he gasped. “Unexpected results of training course: great sex.”

Laughing as well, Bodie said as soon as he could, “And you call _me_ a maniac. Doyle, you are _barking_.”

“Mad for you,” Ray declaimed. Then poked him unromantically. “Berk. Shift yourself, I'm tired of the wet spot.” And strolled toward the bathroom, scratching his arse. Then he threw a grin over his shoulder, because of course he knew Bodie was watching. Then he scowled theatrically and vanished to use up the hot water. Being Ray.


End file.
